Research Series

As Canada's national tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children, the data collected by Cybertip.ca is unique in its content and overarching scope.

In partnership with Bell, the Research Series will pull together the most crucial aspects of the tens of thousands of reports submitted by the Canadian public. The Research Series will include the publication of unique research in the area of online child sexual exploitation, and will promote the creation of best practices for child protection in Canada.

The first report Child Sexual Abuse Images was published in November 2009. The report focuses on child sexual abuse images on websites reported to Cybertip.ca and provides an overview of the scope of the problem from the tipline's perspective. Some of the key findings include:

• 82.1% of the images analyzed by Cybertip.ca depict very young, pre-pubescent children under 12 years old
• Of the 4,110 unique images assessed by analysts, over 35% show sexual assaults against children
• 77.6% of webpages had at least one child abuse image of a child less than 8 years of age, with many showing infants and toddlers being assaulted
• Images of children less than 8 years old most often depicted them being abused through sexual assaults (37.2%)
• Children abused through extreme sexual assaults including bestiality, bondage, torture, and degrading acts such as defecation, mostly (68.5%) occurred against children under 8 years old
• 83% of the images were of girl children

The report includes an analysis of the types and layouts of websites displaying child sexual abuse images in addition to where the sites and images are hosted. It also examines the commercial component of child sexual abuse websites.

The report includes a series of 12 recommendations for educators, policy makers, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders working to reduce the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Some of these recommendations include:

• Sexual abuse education focused particularly on children under the age of 12
• Collaborate with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to establish international standards for the personal information a registrant is required to provide when registering a new domain name
• Partner with domain name registrants to have domains hosting illegal content discarded from use

For more detailed information on the Child Sexual Abuse Images research report, download the summary or full report.

Two additional research reports, one focused on luring and the second on exploitative child modeling, are expected to be published within the next few years.

Bell continues to demonstrate leadership in the area of child protection through its public commitment and support of this issue.

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